DNF - Pbltt!

Darn, our first "Did Not Find" and a creepy scene at that. This cache was (supposedly) at the Howell Wetlands on the west side. I had never been to the wetlands so I was kind of looking forward to seeing what it was all about. It always just looked like a bigwildmudpit pond in passing. As it turns out, that wasn't too far off. (I know, I know, I should appreciate what it has to offer; I just can't get into it.) We approached the wooden bridge trail and began to cross the wetlands; there was a single shoe upside down in the murky waters. "I hope there's not a body attached to it," Jim said. I was thinking the same thing...what a creepy grave that would be! Then we start getting into the wild grasses which were nice in that they were home to several varieties of butterflies and moths. Still, I couldn't help but think about the log entries about "remnants of meth labs" and imagine how easy it would be for some creep to hide in the overgrowth waiting for victims to arrive. EEK! We got to the area where the first stage of this multi-cache was supposed to be and searched high and low without any luck. We were about to give up when I saw a film canister. A note inside indicated new coordinates for the original cache. We moved on to the second stage of the cache using those coordinates, but the terrain was awful. There were sticker bushes and poison ivy everywhere. The woods were pretty torn up in this area making it difficult to pass. We were pretty far off the beaten path and not having a bit of luck so we decided to abandon the search. On the way out, we passed someone toothless and barefoot, definately looking like a drug deal gone bad. Then on reaching the same pond we saw coming in, we saw the other shoe in the same waterbed but in a different area. Makes you want to go pull some missing persons' records and see if any MIAs had a nice new pair of white Nikes with red stripes. Creepy!